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Parliamentary State Secretary Müller: Climate action for secure global harvests
Baku, 21 November 2024 - Claudia Müller, Parliamentary State Secretary at the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture, stressed at COP29 the importance of climate change mitigation and adaptation to safeguard global agricultural yields.
Müller emphasized that climate change is one of the greatest global challenges, particularly affecting countries in the Global South, with natural disasters such as droughts and floods threatening food security.
Agriculture has a key role to play: it can either exacerbate the crisis or actively contribute to solving it.
Müller stressed the need to
- reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture
- store carbon in the soil
- prepare agriculture for the effects of climate change
to ensure secure harvests around the world.
COP29 adopted the Sharm El Sheikh Joint Work on Climate Action on Agriculture and Food Security, which promotes international climate action in the agricultural sector and the implementation of climate action at the national level.
The global community continues negotiations on equitable climate finance at COP29 through November 22, 2024.
Background Information
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), around 23% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture and land use, and up to 37% when considering entire food systems.
The Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) has developed ten measures under the Climate Protection Program 2030 to implement legal requirements for agriculture and forestry and meet climate targets. The goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase carbon storage in the soil.
Additionally, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK) has included agriculture and land-use change in the 2023 Climate Action Programme (KPS 2023) to achieve the goals of the Climate Protection Act by 2030. This includes measures such as improved fertilizer management, sustainable livestock farming, peatland protection, and promoting sustainable food chains and alternative drive technologies.
(Source: BMEL press release)